4 ms·

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if these 'Auto-Pilot' cars are actually being controlled remotely from some off-shore ops center.

• jandrese 7y ago
  In fact at least one company is looking into this, having the car self-navigate as much as possible, but when confronted with a difficult situation like construction or debris in the road it would call back to a remote operator who would take over until you are past the difficult situation. They also saved the operators response so when the next car hits the same obstacle and calls back the next operator can just repeat the same solution. I thought it was a good idea, but somewhat more expensive since you have to keep a big call center running and it depends on having reliable and fast internet connectivity at all times. The alternative is what everybody else is doing where you have to have a full set of controls and a licensed driver behind the wheel ready to take over when the AI runs into a situation it can't handle.
  • bllguo 7y ago
    interesting, but what a terrifying job that would be. dealing with life-or-death scenarios all day long. and the liability questions would become even more complex
    • GhettoMaestro 7y ago
      I think it really becomes a question of what to do when the computer senses it is getting into a scenario that it can not handle with a reasonable confidence %. You wouldn't flash hand-off the car from auto-drive to the operator without some basic safety measures also occurring. One of those will be slowing (or stopping if possible) the car until the remote operator takes over. You won't hand the human "the bag" (responsibility) after the computer gets you totally up shit creek and you have no chance to effect a positive outcome. It will hand over "the bag" when the "we are getting up shit creek incrementally" value crosses some accepted safe threshold. (Didn't mean to ramble.)
      • jandrese 7y ago
        Yes, the AI did come to a stop before ringing up the support desk for assistance. The example video showed a construction site where the entire road was blocked off and the way through was to drive on the shoulder past the construction. However, in the demo the road was completely empty otherwise, which I didn't think was terribly realistic. The memory feature in particular was only useful as a convenience to the next operator, it didn't help the AI become any more self-sufficient.
  • ezzzzz 7y ago
    I don't know enough about ML to comment with any authority, but I think this approach makes sense. Your call-center ops people would provide real-time QA (i.e. make sure the machines aren't killing people) as well as provide training data for your model. If this were in fact the approach, I'd be much more receptive to the promise of 'Autonomous Vehicles'. I for one, refuse to believe the hype that real-time distributed computer vision applications are 'nearly solved'. Consider the amount of variables (pedestrians, pot-holes, un-marked lanes, obstructed signage, other drivers etc etc) at play here...
  • stubish 7y ago
    Similar to how military drones are already operated. You don't even need the autonomous driving part at all. Just being able to remote drive a truck would disrupt the industry, as you can pay your drivers less and get better results giving them six hour shifts in front of a monitor and letting them go home to their families when it is over. Then you can lower the headcount by slaving trucks so one driver is handling a train of 5 or 6 on a highway. All doable now with existing technology, with the extra risk being how reliable your comms are.
• whenanother 7y ago
  I will take what is automation really is for 1000.